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Day 4 The Enchanted HighwayMay 27, 2012
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Artist Gary Greff
Geese in Flight 2001. 156x110 ft. and 75 tons
| Day 4 AM, 55 Degrees and Drizzly. Traveled from Bismarck North Dakota to Dickinson, North Dakota 8:40 AM to 4:40 PM, 8 hour day Stayed at North Park Campground OK, we're definitely not in the right place weather wise! 90s in Columbus, 70s in Alaska, and 40s and 50s here the last 2 days in North Dakota with rain and gloom! Thankfully we have had uneventful days so far, and not all of our trips have started off that way. We used to do very long days when our time was limited, because we never wanted to give up time where we were going to travel. This trip we plan to do at a more leisurely pace, aiming for about 400 miles a day, or about 8 hours on the road, including stops. We left on Thursday and traveled through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois to our first stop in Utica Illinois at the Hickory Hollow Campground. There we met up with Tim and Terri Gallagher who had left from Cincinnati. We traveled through Indianapolis, and through lots of little towns along flat land with silos and grain elevators...nothing at all exciting. If anyone has ever traveled the Yellowhead Highway in Canada, it reminded us a lot of that. It was a sunny day with 68 degrees when we left and in the upper 90s by afternoon. Friday was another beautiful day, with an AM temp OF 69 and 74 later in the day. As we traveled through Illinois, the countryside was full of fields of windmills. Then we entered Wisconsin, the home of Culvers and the Butterburger! Every exit had a Culvers like they have McDonalds at home! We passed though the town of Wisconsin Dells, a well known tourist place known for the largest water parks in the country, then on through the multi-colored patchwork green fields with their rolling irrigation arms. We finished the day in Maple Grove Minnesota, near Minneapolis and spent the night in a Sam's club parking lot. They welcome RVers, and is great when we don't need the AC. Saturday we drove in cool rain all day through Minnesota and into North Dakota, through miles and miles of prairie wetlands, seeing ducks, egrets, and herons. It was so flat across North Dakota it seemed you could see forever. The snow drifts must be bad in winter...it was interesting to see the gates across the freeway entrances for when they close the freeways in winter. 5 PM found us again at a Sam's Club parking lot in Bismarck North Dakota. Today, Sunday, day 4, we decided to take a side trip to do some sightseeing. Along I-94 in North Dakota is a 32 mile stretch of highway going south toward Regent called The Enchanted Highway . You can read about it at www.regentnorthdakota.com. A retired teacher decided to do something to bring visitors to the community, and realized how much people loved hay bale sculptures. He went a little farther. Over the last 21 years, he has designed and built 7 scrap metal sculptures over the 32 miles on the edges of the farm fields, with small parking and picnic areas. The Geese in Flight sculpture at I-94 is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest scrap metal sculpture. Photographs don't do the sculptures justice...it is hard to appreciate the scale. Hopefully we will get some downloaded and on to site for you to see. The sun finally came out today, and we ended up spending a lot more time than we expected. We thought we would make an early day of it, but we still need to find a place to stay...no Sam's in the area. Tomorrow...Canada! |
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